Nisa Muhammad, promoter of the annual Black Marriage Day, urges educated black women to be more open to marriage with blue-collar black men. I think this is a very sensible idea.

Moreover, middle-class black boys are not likely to commit crimes, but are likely to become educated, middle-class black men. They have their pick of educated black women, who outnumber their male counterparts by about 40%.

The Economist concludes that "the simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up fewer black men for non-violent offences."

I disagree. The simplest way to help the black family would be for fewer black men to commit crimes in the first place.

Doesn't this speak more to sentencing discrepancies, though? I agree that that ultimately we have to find a way to keep people, black or white, from turning to crime in the first place. Criminology was a long time ago, but there's a correlation between sex/race and the sentence a judge is likely to hand down, even when you control for the nature of the crime. Black men are the the most likely to get the harshest sentence possible. White women are the mostly likely to get the most lenient sentence possible.

This isn't the original article we read/talked about it, but it's one of many a quick search turned up: http://bit.ly/aRCuDO

So I would modify that last sentence of the Economist article somewhat: we shouldn't lock up black men less often, but we should lock them up at the same rate for the same crimes that we do whites.

(Abstract quote from the article link above:"Regression analyses of incarceration and term-length decisions reveal considerable judicial consistency in the use of sentencing criteria for all defendants; however, important racial/ethnic disparities in sentencing emerge. Consistent with theoretical hypotheses, the authors find that ethnicity has a small to moderate effect on sentencing outcomes that favors white defendants and penalizes Hispanic defendants; black defendants are in an intermediate position.")

I happen to work in a prison in Texas, and the greatest disparity in sentencing I see is not so much between black and white as it is where you were convicted of your crime. Urban counties, like Dallas, are much more lenient (or less harsh) than rural ones.

As to the problem of educated black women being without enough professional black men to choose from, the answer is that they should feel freer to marry white men.

Kerri, I agree that sentencing disparities are part of the problem of the high black male incarceration rate. But victim studies (as opposed to sentenced crimes) show that black men are, indeed, more likely to commit crimes. I think the root cause here is fatherlessness, but this is a large and complex question.

Part of my job in the prison in Texas requires me to interview prisoners and get a psychosocial history from them (I am a mental health clinician). Fatherless is, indeed, a common denominator for almost everyone who is in prison. So is dropping out of school, though that, too, may be a symptom of fatherlessness.

Good point, Gruntled. I was just meaning to point out that both issues go hand in hand-- society should be figuring out how to even out the crime rate among all populations, while also evening out the sentencing trends across the board.

Kerri said,"society should be figuring out how to even out the crime rate among all populations"

Kerri, this is the liberal mindset taken to its absurd conclusion. Wouldn't it be better to focus on LOWERING the crime rate, rather than evening it? Or, are you just concerned with spreading the misery?

Doug,By "even out" I meant lower. I said "even out" because the social problems that contribute to the black crime rate are somewhat different than the social problems that contribute to that of whites--so if we're specifically talking about keeping black fathers out of jail, the measures that lower the black crime rate might not simultaneously lower the white crime rate. Hence I hastily used the term "even out." Sorry for the confusion.

My original comment was just to point out that sentencing discrepancies are an important part of a multi-faceted, very tangled issue--they are not THE reason more black men are in jail, but it is something to keep in mind.

Okay, Kerri. Based upon my experience dealing with prisoners, I have come to the view that we need to give judges more discretion when it comes to sentencing. If a father is involved with his children and gainfully employed, judges should have the latitude to hold them accountable for their crimes in other ways besides just tossing them in prison.